Ironheart

There was not much she could do for him except bathe again his face and hands. He asked for a drink, and Betty propped him up with her arm while she held the tin cup to his lips. Exhausted by the effort, he sank back to the pillow and panted. All the supple strength of his splendid youth had been drained from him. The muscles were lax, the movements of the body feeble.

Sunken eyes stared at her without recognition. “Sure I’ll take your hand, and say ‘Thank you’ too. You’re the best little scout, the best ever.”

She took the offered hand and pressed it gently. “Yes, but now you must rest. You’ve been sick.”

“A Boche got me.” His wandering subconscious thoughts flowed into other memories. “Zero hour, boys. Over the top and give ’em hell.” Then, without any apparent break from one theme to another, his thick voice fell to a cunning whisper. “There’s a joint on South Clark Street where I can get it.”

Into his disjointed mutterings her name came at times, spoken always with a respect that was almost reverence. And perhaps a moment later his voice would ring out clear and crisp in directions to the men working under him. Subjects merged into each other inconsequently—long-forgotten episodes of school days, college larks, murmured endearments to the mother who had died many years since. Listening to him, Betty knew that she was hearing revelations of a soul masculine but essentially clean.

A sound startled her, the click of the latch. She turned her head swiftly as the door opened. Fear drenched her heart. The man on the threshold was Prowers. He had come out of a strong white light and at first could see nothing in the dark cabin.

Betty watched him as he stood there, his bleached blue eyes blinking while they adjusted themselves to another focus.

“What do you want?” she asked sharply, the accent of alarm in her voice.

“A woman, by jiminy by jinks!” The surprise in his squeaky voice was pronounced. He moved forward to the bed. “Clint Reed’s girl. Where you come from? How’d you get here?”

She had drawn back to the wall at the head of the bed in order to keep a space between them. Her heart was racing furiously. His cold eyes, with the knife-edge stab in them, held hers fast.

“I came in over the snow to nurse him.”

“Alone?”

“No. Mr. Merrick’s with me.”

“Where?”

“At the top of the hill. He broke a ski.”

“Where’s Don?”

“Gone to meet him. They’ll be here in a minute.”

A cunning, impish grin broke the lines of the man’s leathery face. He remembered that he had come prepared to be surprised to hear of Hollister’s wound. “Nurse who?” he asked suavely.

“Mr. Hollister, the engineer driving the tunnel.”

“Sick, is he?” He scarcely took the trouble to veil his rancorous malice. It rode him, voice, manner, and mocking eye. His mouth was a thin straight line, horribly cruel.

“Some one shot him—last night—through the window.” She knew now that he had done it or had had it done. The sense of outrage, of horror at his unhuman callousness, drove the fear out of her bosom. Her eyes accused him, though her tongue made no charge.

“Shot him, by jiminy by jinks! Why, Daniels had ought to put the fellow in the calaboose. Who did it?”

“I don’t know. Do you?” she flashed back.

His evil grin derided her. “How would I know, my dear?”

He drew up a chair and sat down. The girl did not move. Rigid and watchful, she did not let her eye waver from him for an instant.

He nodded toward the delirious man. “Will he make it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Doc seen him yet?”

“No.”

“Glad I came. I can help nurse him.” He cut short a high cackle of laughter to ask a question. “What’s yore gun for, dearie? You wouldn’t throw it on poor Jake Prowers, would you?”

He was as deadly as dynamite, she thought, more treacherous than a rattlesnake. She wanted to cry out her horror at him. To see him sitting there, humped up like a spider, not three feet from the man he had tried to murder, filled her with repulsion. There was more in her feeling than that; a growing paralysis of terror lest he might reach out and in a flash complete the homicide he had attempted.

She tried to reason this away. He dared not do it, with her here as a witness, with two men drawing closer every minute. Don Black had told her that he wouldn’t strike in the open, and the range rider had known him more years than she had lived. But the doubt remained. She did not know what he would do. Since she did not live in the same world as he, it was not possible for her to follow his thought processes.

Then, with no previous intimation that his delirium had dropped from him, the wounded man startled Betty by asking a rational question.

“Did you come to see how good a job you’d done?” he said quietly to Prowers.

The cowman shook his head, still with the Satanic grin. “No job of mine, son. I’m thorough.”

“Your orders, but maybe not your hand,” Hollister insisted feebly.

Betty moved into his line of vision, and to his startled brain the motion of her was like sweet unearthly music. He looked silently at her for a long moment.

“Am I still out of my head?” he asked. “It’s not really you, is it?”

“Yes,” she said, very gently. “You mustn’t talk.”

“In Black’s cabin, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Shot through the window, Black told me. Remember, if I don’t get well, it was this man or Cig that did it.”

“I’ll remember,” she promised. “But you’re going to get well. Don’t talk, please.”

“Just one thing. What are you doing here?”

“I came to look after you. Now that’s all—please.”

He said no more, in words. But the eyes of sick men are like those of children. They tell the truth. From them is stripped the veil woven by time and the complexities of life.

Sounds of voices on the hillside drifted to the cabin. Betty’s heart leaped joyfully. Friends were at hand. It was too late now for Prowers to do any harm even if it was in his mind.

The voices approached the cabin. The girl recognized that of Merrick, strong and dominant and just a little heavy. She heard Black’s drawling answer, without being able to distinguish the words.

The door opened. Four men came into the room. The two who brought up the rear were Dr. Rayburn and Lon Forbes.

“Oh, Lon!” Betty cried, and went to him with a rush. “I’m awf’ly glad you came.”

She clung to him, trembling, a sob in her throat.

The rawboned foreman patted her shoulder with a touch of embarrassment. “There—there, honey, ’s all right. Why didn’t you wait for old Lon instead o’ hoppin’ away like you done?”

Prowers tilted back his chair on two legs and chirped up with satiric comment. “We got quite a nice party present. Any late arrivals not yet heard from?”

Both Lon and Justin Merrick were taken aback. In the darkness they had not yet recognized the little man.

The foreman spoke dryly. “Might ’a’ known it. Trouble and Jake Prowers hunt in couples. Always did.”

“I could get a right good testimonial from Mr. Lon Forbes,” the cowman said, with his high cackle of splenetic laughter. “Good old Lon, downright an’ four-square, always a booster for me.”

Betty whispered. “He’s an awful man, Lon. I’m scared of him. I didn’t know any minute what he was going to do. Oh, I am glad you came.”

“Same here,” Lon replied. “Don’t you be scared, Betty. He can’t do a thing—not a thing.”

Merrick had been taking off his skis. He came up to Betty now. “Did he annoy you—say anything or—?”

“No, Justin.” A shiver ran down her spine. “He just looked and grinned. I wanted to scream. He shot Mr. Hollister. I know he did. Or had it done by that Cig.”

“Yes. I don’t doubt that.”

The doctor, disencumbered of impedimenta of snowshoes and wraps, fussed forward to the bedside. “Well, let’s see—let’s see what’s wrong here.”

He examined the wound, effervesced protests and questions, and prepared for business with the bustling air that characterized him.

“Outa the room now—all but Miss Reed and one o’ you men. Lon, you’ll do.”

“I’ll stay,” announced Merrick with decision.

“All right. All right. I want some clean rags, Black. You got plenty of hot water, I see. Clear out, boys.”

“You don’t need a good nurse, Doc?” Prowers asked, not without satiric malice. He was playing with fire, and he knew it. Everybody in the room suspected him of this crime. He felt a perverted enjoyment in their hostility.

Black chose this moment to make his declaration of independence. “I’d light a shuck outa here if I was you, Jake, an’ I wouldn’t come back, seems to me.”

The cold, bleached eyes of the cowman narrowed. “You’re givin’ me that advice as a friend, are you, Don?” he asked.

The range rider’s jaw stopped moving. In his cheek the tobacco quid stuck out. His face, habitually set to the leathery imperturbability of his calling, froze now to an expressionless mask.

“I’m sure givin’ you that advice,” he said evenly.

“I don’t hear so awful good, Don. As a friend, did you say?” The little man cupped an ear with one hand in ironic mockery.

Black’s gaze was hard as gun-metal. “I said I’d hit the trail for home if I was you, Jake, an’ I’d stay there for a spell with kinda low visibility like they said in the war.”

“I getcha, Don.” Prowers shot a blast of cold lightning from under his scant brows. “I can take a hint without waitin’ for a church to fall on me. Rats an’ a sinkin’ ship, eh? You got a notion these fellows are liable to win out on me, an’ you want to quit while the quittin’ is good. I been wonderin’ for quite a while if you wasn’t yellow.”

“Don’t do that wonderin’ out loud, Jake,” the other warned quietly. “If you do, you’ll sure enough find out.”

The little man laughed scornfully, met in turn defiantly the eyes of Betty, Merrick, and Forbes, turned on his heel, and sauntered out.